building a caterham

[lotuselise]

Hi,

 

I am considering building a caterham 1800 myself as a pre-assembled kit

 

I am not sure which level of technical skills and what type of equipment is needed as a minimum

 

Are there any good books or manuals on the market for novices like me?

 

Thanks for any information

 

vincent

[Dominic Berry]

Vincent

 

I built my 1.6K SS a couple of years ago using the most basic kit. All the really difficult bits are done for you (wiring loom, dash, bodywork panels...) I had no experence of car building apart from mucking about on a couple of Minis in my teens. I had no real difficultity and those bits that were tough I just called Caterham - they know the cars(!) and were always very helpful. The Manual supplied is also reasonably good.

 

Apart from a standard took kit, additional tools needed are a decent torque wrench and socket set (and maybe some circlip pliers). Thats about it really.

 

Dominic

 

[John Richens]

Vincent,having bought a factory built car previously , I was talked into building an R500 earlier this year by my colleague in crime( he having built 2 sevens previously ).The build manual is mainly correct depending on what you build but with plenty of vague areas too (non-existant for the R500)...I was a complete technical gumby but with a few phone calls and help from the factory and friends we succeeded quite quickly ( our main problem was trying to find out whether we were missing parts or whether they were different to the norm for our car).A good socket set ,axle stands,hydraulic jack, rivet gun, and the hire of an engine hoist should suffice,you need one special socket to tighten the drive shafts (plus 200lb torque wrench..that can be done by the factory)...apart from that ..a sense of humour and countless supply of refreshments ! Good luck John

[Dominic Berry]

Regarding the 200lbft torque, get a 4 ft scaffold pole and a decent set of bathroom scales. Put the pole on the socket wrench and stand on the scales at the end of the pole. Weigh yourself & push up (down) on the pole until your weight is 50lb more (less) then your original weight. At 200lbft you don't have to be toooooo accurate. (For a 2ft pole you will need to weigh 100lb more)

 

Dominic

[Ernie Panks]

Don't worry about building the car at all, whatever problems you may encounter will be relatively easy to overcome with a phone call or two to the factory. The technical help available is really excellent and above all, there is no finer feeling after building the car than turning that key for the first time and making a hell of a racket as the car fires up for the first time.

 

 

R822CVG

[Dominic Berry]

...Or as in my case, it didn't fire up because there was a wire missing from the loom (Power to the engine management). Took two weeks of backward and forwards to Caterham (try this, try that...). In the end I told them to come and pick it up and sort it out for me. Took them two day to find the fault but at least they did find it.

 

So if the worse comes to the worst, you can always send it back.

 

Dominic

[CHRIS CLARK]

Domonic

 

As we all know, Caterham buy everything in so a wire missing from the loom must have been some outworkers idea of a joke! A real problem, but I,m glad they sorted it for you!

[CHRIS CLARK]

Sorry------DOMINIC!

 

Just having a bad night!

[Dominic Berry]

That was what Caterham said - Still it was very frustrating at the time. It's was still a fantastic feeling the first time I fired it up though.

 

Vincent - If you're still following the thread, just go for it. I felt building the car was half the Caterham experence. There's always this list and the factory to help.

 

Dominic